Recent advances in information technology, in particular the Internet and World Wide Web, have lead to an unprecedented growth in the amount of data generally available to a broad spectrum of users. Recently the size of the Internet has been estimated at approximately 3.2 billion pages growing at a monthly rate of 25%. Additionally, the rate of growth of private Intranets is equally significant.
As the sheer volume of available information expands, the difficultly in keeping track of newly available information, as well as the ability to discern relevant and desired information becomes increasingly difficult. For example, to do a thorough search, drug discovery scientists will typically have to access over thirty different on-line databases in the course of their normal research. In keeping with current display methodologies, each of these different databases typically relies on keyword searching and linearly presented lists of search results. More importantly, the job of tracking relationships between the data provided by each of these different sources is typically done in a manual fashion. While this approach can be effective, it is evident that significant improvements in efficiency could be realized if the vast quantities of available information could be presented in a more coherent manner.
Various attempts have been made to improve the manner in which information is presented to users. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,031,537; 6,037,944; 6,166,739; and 6,256,032 issued to Hugh describe a system in which a plurality of “thoughts” are organized in such a way that relationships between various thoughts are also included. Using a graphical representation of the resulting thought network, users are able to select individual thoughts and thereby have related thoughts displayed in a hierarchical fashion. Furthermore, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,590,250; and 5,619,632 issued to Lamping et al. describe a system in which nodes and links between such nodes are displayed through a space having a negative curvature, i.e., a sphere. A parent node is displayed at a parent position, and other nodes having varying degrees of relationship to the parent node are displayed at other positions surrounding the parent position, thereby illustrating the network of relationships between the displayed nodes. By selecting and dragging any given node closer to the parent position, the various other related nodes are removed from or added to the displayed area in such a manner so as to provide the appearance of a sphere rotating.
The techniques described in the Hugh and Lamping patents represent an advancement in the art due, in part, to the fact that each technique provides an indication of relationships between various displayed data elements. However, neither of these techniques incorporates the use of concepts or data types to further organize the information displayed. It is believed that a technique that is capable not only of displaying relationships between data elements, but that is also capable of organizing such data elements according to data type would represent a significant advancement in the art.